Abbey Smith’s Journey West
Late August 1889
The Letter Ahead
Before she left McCook, Abbey had sat down with pen and paper and written to Della with the particulars, the way any sensible traveler would, so that no one would be left standing on a platform not knowing which train to watch for.
Dear Della,
I have my tickets. I leave McCook Thursday next, changing at Denver, then Pueblo, then again at San Bernardino, and expect by the schedule to arrive at the San Diego depot on Tuesday evening, the twenty-seventh of August, near six o'clock, though you know as well as I do that trains keep their own notions of time and this may run later. Tell Austin not to trouble himself standing about in case I am delayed — I have crossed enough country in my life to manage myself if the connection is missed, and I would rather he not fret over it.
I will see you soon, my dear, and you are not to worry yourself sick before then. Sit still and rest and let this baby come in its own time.
Your loving mother
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Denver
The first leg was the easiest, though it did not feel easy at the time — a full day and night rattling south and west out of Nebraska into Colorado on the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, the flat wheat country giving way slowly to a paler, drier land, and then, toward evening of the second day, to the sight of mountains standing up blue and jagged on the horizon in a way Abbey had never seen in New York, Wisconsin or Iowa or any of the flat Kansas and Nebraska counties she'd called home. She had wired David from the Denver depot as promised, a short line — ARRIVED DENVER SAFE CHANGING CARS TONIGHT — and eaten a supper of cold chicken from the basket Matie had packed, sitting on a hard bench amid the noise and steam of the station while she waited for the connection south on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
Pueblo
Pueblo came the next morning, a rougher sort of town than Denver, thick with the smoke of the smelters, and here she changed again onto another Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train that would carry her down through Trinidad and over Raton Pass into New Mexico Territory before swinging west. This was the part of the journey that tested her most — three full days of desert crossing, the country growing stranger and emptier the farther they went, red rock and sage and distances that made the Kansas prairie seem almost cozy by comparison. She shared a car for a stretch with a family bound for Los Angeles, and an elderly gentleman going out to San Bernardino for his health, who told her at some length about the citrus groves and the dry air and how a man's lungs did better out there than anywhere in the East. Abbey nodded along and thought of Della, alone and frightened and so many more miles yet to go.
San Bernardino
At San Bernardino she changed cars a last time to the California Southern Railroad, onto the line that ran down through the inland valleys toward San Diego, and here — for the first time since Nebraska — the window showed her green. Orange groves, she was fairly certain, rows of them marching off toward low hills, and beyond that a haze that the conductor told her, when she asked, was the ocean air coming in. She had never in her life seen the ocean, and found herself watching for it out the window for the better part of the last afternoon, though it did not properly come into view until the train had nearly reached its end.
Arrival in San Diego
The San Diego depot, when the train finally drew in that Tuesday evening — later than the schedule had promised, nearer to seven than six, exactly as she'd warned Della it might run — was smaller than she'd expected and busier, full of the noise and bustle of a town that seemed to be growing faster than it could quite build itself to hold.
She saw Austin before he saw her — a slim, mustachioed young man pacing the platform in his shirtsleeves with his hat pushed back, craning to look down the length of each car as it emptied, and when his eyes found her descending the steps with her carpetbag his whole face opened up with relief.
"Mrs. Smith!" He was at her side and had the carpetbag out of her hand almost before she'd got both feet on the platform. "I'd about decided the train had fallen off a trestle somewhere back in the desert."
"Trains do not fall off trestles, Austin, they simply run behind their own schedule out of pure contrariness. Where is Della? Surely you didn't let her come down here in her condition."
"No, ma'am, she's home — I wouldn't hear of her standing about a depot in this heat, not with her so close to her time. She'd have come anyway if I hadn't near locked the door on her." He grinned, hefting the trunk up onto his shoulder with the easy strength of a young man. "She's been asking after that train every hour since noon."
"Then let us not keep her waiting a minute longer."
National City
The road out to National City ran along the edge of the bay in the last light of evening, the water gone the color of pewter, and Abbey sat beside Austin in the buggy watching a country utterly unlike anything she had crossed to get there — low hills and canyons, some houses, dried streams, dark green groves, the air soft and salted in a way that Nebraska air never was.
Della was on the porch before the buggy had properly stopped, one hand braced on the rail and the other pressed to the great round weight of her belly, and Abbey was out of the buggy and up the steps almost before Austin had the brake set.
"Mother." Della said it the way a much younger girl might have, and put her face against Abbey's shoulder, and for a moment neither of them said anything else at all.
"Let me look at you." Abbey held her back at arm's length, studying her the way she'd studied each of her own children a hundred times over the years. "You're carrying well. Not so very long now, I'd think."
"The doctor says two weeks, maybe less." Della laughed, a little shakily. "I have been counting the days since I received your letter, wondering if you'd truly come."
"Of course I came. Did you think I'd sit in McCook shelling peas while you managed this alone?"
They went in together, Austin following with the trunk, and once Della was settled in the front room with her feet up on a stool — over her protests that she was not an invalid, only enormous — Abbey finally sat down herself and let out a long breath, feeling, for the first time in five days, the stillness of a chair that was not rocking with the motion of a railway car.
"Now," Della said, "you must tell me everything. What was it like, all that way? Austin, fetch her something to eat, she must be half starved."
"I ate well enough, don't fuss," Abbey said, though she didn't refuse the plate Austin brought all the same. "But I will tell you, it was a journey and a half. We went first up into Denver — and Della, the mountains there, I have never seen the like. Standing up blue against the sky like something out of a picture book, with snow still on the tops of some of them, and this in August."
"Snow in August!" Della shook her head. "Austin, did you hear that?"
"I heard it," Austin said, settling into the doorway with his own supper plate. "I spent 14 years in Boulder with my parents and brother, so I’ve seen those beautiful mountains, rivers and forests.”
"Then from Denver we went on to Pueblo, which I will say plainly was not so fine a town — all smoke and noise from the smelting works, though I didn't linger there above a few hours before the next connection came through. And then, Della, then came the desert." Abbey shook her head, remembering it. "Three days of it, near enough. Red rock and sage brush and cactus and not a green thing in sight, mile after mile, until I began to wonder if the whole rest of the country had simply dried up and blown away. There was an old gentleman on the car with me a good stretch of that — going out to San Bernardino for his lungs, he said, and talked my ear near off about the dry air and the orange groves, until I confess I was glad enough when he got off at his stop."
"And then San Bernardino," Austin prompted, smiling.
"And then San Bernardino, and I tell you, I have never in my life been so glad to see a green thing as I was those orange groves. Rows and rows of them, and the air different too — softer, somehow, with a smell to it I couldn't name until the conductor told me it was the ocean I was smelling, still miles off. I sat at that window the whole rest of the way watching for it, like a child."
"Did you see it? The ocean?"
"Not till we were nearly here — and then all at once there it was, gray and enormous, with crashing waves, bigger than anything I'd imagined from hearing tell of it. I don't mind saying it took the breath clean out of me." She looked over at Austin. "And then this one comes striding up and down that train station platform like a man who's misplaced something, looking fit to shake the conductor by the collar over a train running an hour behind."
"I was not striding," Austin said, with dignity.
"You were pacing a groove into those boards, and don't tell me different, because I watched you do it a full minute before you thought to look my way."
Della laughed — a real laugh, easier than the shaky one from the porch — and reached over to take her husband's hand. "That does sound like him."
"Well." Abbey set down her empty plate at last, and looked at her daughter's face in the lamplight — tired, and glad, and no longer quite so frightened as the letter had sounded. "I am here now, and I don't intend to go anywhere again until there's a grandchild in this house for me to spoil. So you may stop fretting, both of you, and let an old woman get some sleep after five days on the cars."
"You're not old, you’re forty-five!" Della said.
"I am tonight," Abbey said, and let Austin help her up from the chair, feeling the whole long distance of the journey settle into her bones at last, now that there was no more of it left to travel.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s Note: This is a work of historical fiction based on documented family facts, names, and locations. The specific conversations and details of the journey are imagined, as no firsthand account survives.
================================
The AI Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this story is in (and on my YouTube channel):
This is historical fiction based on known events in the lives of my ancestors -- it might have been this way. Devier J. and Abigail (Vaux) Smith are my 2nd great-grandparents through their daughter Della (Smith) Carringer (1862-1944), and I have significant information about this family from the available records, but I know nothing about their day-to-day lives.
As always, I am amazed at what life was like in any place over 130 years ago. This description of her train trip and reception in San Diego in 1889 is interesting and so different from our current daily activities.
After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit this Carringer family in 1889 San Diego and witness their daily lives. I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.
Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment